Cambridge SoundWorks Radio CD 745i (black)

Pros: Great sound and reception, plus a very good variety of controls and inputs with easy access

Cons: Easily fixed problems that the tech rep says are "frequent" ought to be in an errata sheet in the manual

Summary: I've had this unit for just over 3 weeks and I'm very pleased with it, however my "out-of-box-experience" was less than stellar. The radio reception is great even on the internal antenna in a room with relatively pooor reception, the sound is beautiful (compared to the boomboxes I've had prior to this), and the controls are easy to learn (the fact that the Bose WaveSystem only has a remote for the controls was big turn-off). However, the CD player appeared to be dead-on-arrival. After reading the manual twice and seeing no troubleshooting options to fix why the CD player was not accepting discs, I repackaged everything up and was going to have my wife drive it up to the main store for a replacement. When my wife called for an RMA number, the tech asked why and said "oh, that happens a lot in shipping--just hold the CD eject button in for 15 seconds to discharge the static buildup." Well that did the trick, but such a simple fix ought to be in the manual's troubleshooting section if it "happens a lot." No complaints other than that. Although I've not evaluated the iPod dock, it's got a dedicated input for that which recharges your iPod and also has an AUX input to hook up a Zen or other music player.

I'd recommend the Cambridge Soundworks over the Bose if you want control over treble/base and you don't want to have to worry about a lost or dead remote. I looked at the Polk i-Sonic which sounded great in the store, but high ambients prevented evaluation of the noise from the DVD player I'd read in other reviews--plus I saw it as $200 extra over the Cambridge Soundworks player since I just needed CD, not DVD.